THE INTERVIEW STORY.

Dear Lagos you never cease to amaze me.
I had just finished a contract job which I had very much prayed against it’s renewal.
 It wasn’t the kind of job I wished to stay in for long. At the time it was just for the passing, my services were required and I had rendered it.
Now I was as free as a bird that had been let loose from its cage, very much free to work on the ideas germinating in my head. Ideas that came anytime I was in traffic or at awkward moments while I was still at work. Ideas  that gave my not wanting a renewal of the contract, good reasons to be on my own turf and call the shots.
Three days after my contract job had expired my phone rings and it’s a customer service representative of a telecommunications company that’s on the line. He introduces himself in a steamy baritone voice very sensual but of course I try my best to concentrate on what he has to say. He tells me that my curriculum vitae had been received by the human resources department as I had applied for the position of a customer service representative. He says that and am taken aback as I begin to conduct  a mental memory search of where I had sent my Cvs to in the past months.


 He doesn’t stop there he goes on to say that he called to conduct the first part of the interview process which happened to be the phone assessment so he asks me questions bordering on the intending job position. Having answered all questions satisfactorily he tells me to await an email which would inform me of my progress in the first stage of the interview.
You can imagine the joy and excitement that beclouds me, I ask myself if it’s real that an ordinary Nigerian youth like me with no fatherly connection or uncle’s, brother’s friend , relation in any telecommunications firm would have her Cv considered and called up for an interview.
So I just tell myself it must be all of God’s own doing.


Days sailed by and rolled into weeks, with a quick trip to my mail box am greeted with a mail that informs me of my success of the phone assessment and the urgent need to partake in a personality assessment test to move to the next stage of the interview, which I undertake and scale through successfully. The next email I receive days later says I have been invited to attend a computer based test and trust …that I was really elated that I was making progress.
However I am welcomed to the reality of the state of the nation, the hints of the impending fuel scarcity had finally come to light. There had been no light for some days and ironing had become an almost impossible possibility.
I t was already some minutes past twelve and the computer test was slated for twelve thirty. I was only fifteen minutes away from the time, and in my mind I was silently cursing the tricycle rider who had decided at the last minute to buy fuel at a fuel station whose seemingly endless queue was annoying. The rider had joined this queue and had felt relaxed for almost fifteen minutes of my precious time which was wasting away. I couldn’t stomach the wait anymore and it was my vile laden rants in unison with my fellow passengers that irked the rider’s conscience to hit the road staright on to the central bus stop which was also everybody’s last stop.


While  trying to gather my thoughts together as I tried to get back into the character of the job applicant that I was. I was also seriously trying to overcome the temptation of abusing the motor mechanic who was seated next to me. His dirty and greasy apron was my nightmare in daytime, for I had held my body in an upright position till I got to the final stop.
As I alighted from the tricycle while trying to produce my fare, my eyes glimpsed the time on my wristwatch, Gosh! It was twelve thirty and I was only a bus away from my interview venue. I summoned courage to continue my journey but I was called back by a lady who called my attention to the grease stain that had created a Nigerian map scar on my white shirt. The white shirt I had put quite a handful of hypo into to make it sparkle as much as it did that my neighbor had complimented me that I looked immmaculate clean.
What do I do now, wild thoughts came rushing in. I was a bus away from the venue and it was already time for the test. Lord have mercy!

Francisca Okwulehie.